02:22 pm - voteThis afternoon, I walked corvisdog around the neighborhood to my local place of voting. And I voted. Despite loud cries to the contrary, I don't think my input into this election mattered. I felt like I should vote, if only for the turnout numbers. After a minor in Political Philosophy, including a semester on Democratic theory, that's basically how I feel -- it doesn't really matter how you vote, but voting is the only way it can work. We don't live in a democracy; I don't really believe that more than two parties is stable or sustainable; but the system does have mechanisms for self-improvement. But that cycle can only be reached through high voter turnout. If anyone is actually interested in my arguments behind this, I'd be happy to go into it in the comments.

This election, we had two main candidates running for Governor - Democrat Rendell, former PHL-Mayor; Republican Fischer, Attorney General. The candidates have been completely ridiculous -- over $70M has been spent. They've spent $70M to basically demonstrate that neither of them is a good person or politician. At the same time, they've done all they can to slight the other two candidates -- Libertarian Krawchak; Green Morrill -- including suggesting that they should only take part in the Lt. Govenor debates, if they really want to debate at all.

So, I sat in the booth (unfortunately, I was unable to let Corvis flip the switches, like I used to do as a small child) to vote, with this: two big names I had reason to dislike (Rendell's campaign hit my house this morning with yet more doorjunk!) and a spending history I had little desire to encourage; a Libertarian -- pretty far from my political leanings; a Green candidate, a party I'm not particularly hot on. Rendell will almost certainly win, he's had a lead for a while. Do I vote Democrat, despite my dislike of the candidate? Do I vote Third Party, despite not believing in either candidate nor the standard three-party arguments? I leave my vote as an exercise for the Reader, I've given sufficient hints. :)

Comments:

hey there, i just got back from the polls. ugh, what a backwards system, first of all. so i registered as a minnesota voter my freshman year for the presidential election, figuring a democratic vote in MN would make more of a difference (it's a pretty evenly split state) than in MA. anyways, like a good little political science major, i go to to the polls after my professor literally yelled at us for 2 hours to "give a fuck about one of the tightest senate races in our country, and an extremely important race for governor." so i get there and eventhough my mailing address has not changed, because i no longer live in my freshman dorm, i had to re-register. yes, i could have lied and said i still lived in musser 203 and been on my merry way, but i prefer standing in line for an hour. i won't go into all the stupid little annoyances, but yeah. it'll be interesting to see how this one turns out. sucks wellstone died, i was a big fan of his. ahh well, go mondale.